Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel

By Jonathan Safran Foer

A funny, uplifting novel about a boy's journey through New York in the aftermath of September 11th from one of today's most celebrated writers.

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell embarks on an urgent, secret mission that will take him through the five boroughs of New York. His goal is to find the lock that matches a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11. This seemingly impossible task will bring Oskar into contact with survivors of all sorts of an exhilarating, affecting, often hilarious, and ultimately healing journey. With humor, tenderness, and awe, Jonathan Safran Foer confronts the traumas of our country's difficult history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Sep 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9780547416212

Jonathan Safran Foer

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER is the author of the novels Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and a work of nonfiction, Eating Animals. His books have won numerous awards and have been translated into 36 languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Book preview

Copyright © 2005 by Jonathan Safran Foer

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [e-mail] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

www.hmhco.com

Also visit www.theprojectmuseum.com.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 0-618-32970-6

Book design by Anne Chalmers

Cover design and illustration: Gray318

eISBN 978-0-547-41621-2

v8.0118

ILLUSTRATIONS

Pages i, 29, 45, 47–49, 63, 98, 115, 198, 134, 212, 260, 261, 265 copyright © Jonathan Safran Foer; pages iii, 166–67, © Marianne Müller; pages v, 103, copyright © 2005 by Christopher Moisan; page 53, © Jann Lipka / Getty Images; page 54, © The Scotsman / Corbis Sygma; page 55, © Bettmann / Corbis; page 56, © Stephen Waits; page 57, © Peter Johnson / Corbis; page 58, © Alison Wright / Corbis; pages 59, 62, 205, 327–355, photo illustration based on a photograph by Lyle Owerko © 2001 / Polaris; pages 60, 61, © David Ball / Corbis; page 64, © Chang W. Lee , The New York Times / Redux Pictures; page 65, © Randy Faris / Corbis; page 66, Earliest Human Relatives (American Museum of Natural History), © Hiroshi Sugimoto; page 67, © Alexander Nemenov, AFP / Getty Images; page 89, © Alan Schein Photography / Corbis; pages 92, 289, © Kevin Fleming / Corbis; page 95, © Palani Mohan / Getty Images; page 148, © Julie Jacobson / AP Images; page 155, © Lester V. Bergman / Corbis; page 191, © Ralph Crane / Time & Life Pictures / Getty Images; page 241, © Angela Jimenez / Getty Images; page 246, © James Leynse / Corbis; page 253, © Mario Tama / Getty Images North America / Getty Images; page 294, © Philip Harvey / Corbis; page 303, copyright © 2005 by Anne Chalmers; page 318, © Rob Matheson / Corbis.

Letters attributed to real people in this novel are entirely fictitious, even if they seem real.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

A major heartfelt thank you to everyone at Houghton Mifflin. You have encouraged me to be myself, even when that self would test a mother’s patience. I feel lucky to be part of your family.

The author found inspiration in the testimony of numerous Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden survivors, but especially that of Kinue Tomoyasu, a version of which Oskar plays to his class.

For

NICOLE,

my idea of beautiful

What the?

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad’s voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of Yellow Submarine, which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d’être, which is a French expression that I know. Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If I wanted to be extremely hilarious, I’d train it to say, Wasn’t me! every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously, my anus would say, "Ce n’étais pas moi!"

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone’s heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone’s hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don’t really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn’t have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.

And also, there are so many times when you need to make a quick escape, but humans don’t have their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so what about a birdseed shirt?

Anyway.

My first jujitsu class was three and a half months ago. Self-defense was something that I was extremely curious about, for obvious reasons, and Mom thought it would be good for me to have a physical activity besides tambourining, so my first jujitsu class was three and a half months ago. There were fourteen kids in the class, and we all had on neat white robes. We practiced bowing, and then we were all sitting down Native American style, and then Sensei Mark asked me to go over to him. Kick my privates, he told me. That made me feel self-conscious. "Excusez-moi? I told him. He spread his legs and told me, I want you to kick my privates as hard as you can. He put his hands at his sides, and took a breath in, and closed his eyes, and that’s how I knew that actually he meant business. Jose," I told him, and inside I was thinking, What the? He told me, Go on, guy. Destroy my privates. Destroy your privates? With his eyes still closed he cracked up a lot and said, You couldn’t destroy my privates if you tried. That’s what’s going on here. This is a demonstration of the well-trained body’s ability to absorb a direct blow. Now destroy my privates. I told him, I’m a pacifist, and since most people my age don’t know what that means, I turned around and told the others, I don’t think it’s right to destroy people’s privates. Ever. Sensei Mark said, Can I ask you something? I turned back around and told him, "‘Can I ask you something?’ is asking me something. He said, Do you have dreams of becoming a jujitsu master? No, I told him, even though I don’t have dreams of running the family jewelry business anymore. He said, Do you want to know how a jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master? I want to know everything, I told him, but that isn’t true anymore either. He told me, A jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master by destroying his master’s privates. I told him, That’s fascinating." My last jujitsu class was three and a half months ago.

I desperately wish I had my tambourine with me now, because even after everything I’m still wearing heavy boots, and sometimes it helps to play a good beat. My most impressive song that I can play on my tambourine is The Flight of the Bumblebee, by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, which is also the ring tone I downloaded for the cell phone I got after Dad died. It’s pretty amazing that I can play The Flight of the Bumblebee, because you have to hit incredibly fast in parts, and that’s extremely hard for me, because I don’t really have wrists yet. Ron offered to buy me a five-piece drum set. Money can’t buy me love, obviously, but I asked if it would have Zildjian cymbals. He said, Whatever you want, and then he took my yo-yo off my desk and started to walk the dog with it. I know he just wanted to be friendly, but it made me incredibly angry. "Yo-yo moi! I told him, grabbing it back. What I really wanted to tell him was You’re not my dad, and you never will be."

Isn’t it so weird how the number of dead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, so that one day there isn’t going to be room to bury anyone anymore? For my ninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to National Geographic, which she calls "the National Geographic. She also gave me a white blazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it’s too big to wear so it will last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa’s camera, which I loved for two reasons. I asked why he didn’t take it with him when he left her. She said, Maybe he wanted you to have it. I said, But I was negative-thirty years old. She said, Still." Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn’t, because there aren’t enough skulls!

So what about skyscrapers for dead people that were built down? They could be underneath the skyscrapers for living people that are built up. You could bury people one hundred floors down, and a whole dead world could be underneath the living one. Sometimes I think it would be weird if there were a skyscraper that moved up and down while its elevator stayed in place. So if you wanted to go to the ninety-fifth floor, you’d just press the 95 button and the ninety-fifth floor would come to you. Also, that could be extremely useful, because if you’re on the ninety-fifth floor, and a plane hits below you, the building could take you to the ground, and everyone could be safe, even if you left your birdseed shirt at home that day.

I’ve only been in a limousine twice ever. The first time was terrible, even though the limousine was wonderful. I’m not allowed to watch TV at home, and I’m not allowed to watch TV in limousines either, but it was still neat that there was a TV there. I asked if we could go by school, so Toothpaste and The Minch could see me in a limousine. Mom said that school wasn’t on the way, and we couldn’t be late to the cemetery. Why not? I asked, which I actually thought was a good question, because if you think about it, why not? Even though I’m not anymore, I used to be an atheist, which means I didn’t believe in things that couldn’t be observed. I believed that once you’re dead, you’re dead forever, and you don’t feel anything, and you don’t even dream. It’s not that I believe in things that can’t be observed now, because I don’t. It’s that I believe that things are extremely complicated. And anyway, it’s not like we were actually burying him, anyway.

Even though I was trying hard for it not to, it was annoying me how Grandma kept touching me, so I climbed into the front seat and poked the driver’s shoulder until he gave me some attention. What. Is. Your. Designation. I asked in Stephen Hawking voice. Say what? He wants to know your name, Grandma said from the back seat. He handed me his card.

GERALD THOMPSON

Sunshine Limousine

serving the five boroughs

[phone]

I handed him my card and told him, Greetings. Gerald. I. Am. Oskar. He asked me why I was talking like that. I told him, Oskar’s CPU is a neural-net processor. A learning computer. The more contact he has with humans, the more he learns. Gerald said, O and then he said K. I couldn’t tell if he liked me or not, so I told him, Your sunglasses are one hundred dollars. He said, One seventy-five. Do you know a lot of curse words? I know a couple. I’m not allowed to use curse words. Bummer. What’s ‘bummer’? It’s a bad thing. Do you know ‘shit’? That’s a curse, isn’t it? Not if you say ‘shiitake.’ Guess not. Succotash my Balzac, dipshiitake. Gerald shook his head and cracked up a little, but not in the bad way, which is at me. I can’t even say ‘hair pie,’ I told him, unless I’m talking about an actual pie made out of rabbits. Cool driving gloves. Thanks. And then I thought of something, so I said it. "Actually, if limousines were extremely long, they wouldn’t need drivers. You could just get in the back seat, walk through the limousine, and then get out of the front seat, which would be where you wanted to go. So in this situation, the front seat would be at the cemetery. And I would be watching the game right now. I patted his shoulder and told him, When you look up ‘hilarious’ in the dictionary, there’s a picture of you."

In the back seat, Mom was holding something in her purse. I could tell that she was squeezing it, because I could see her arm muscles. Grandma was knitting white mittens, so I knew they were for me, even though it wasn’t cold out. I wanted to ask Mom what she was squeezing and why she had to keep it hidden. I remember thinking that even if I were suffering hypothermia, I would never, ever put on those mittens.

Now that I’m thinking about it, I told Gerald, "they could make an incredibly long limousine that had its back seat at your mom’s VJ and its front seat at your mausoleum, and it would be as long as your life. Gerald said, Yeah, but if everyone lived like that, no one would ever meet anyone, right? I said, So?"

Mom squeezed, and Grandma knitted, and I told Gerald, I kicked a French chicken in the stomach once, because I wanted to make him crack up, because if I could make him crack up, my boots could be a little lighter. He didn’t say anything, probably because he didn’t hear me, so I said, "I said I kicked a French chicken in the stomach once. Huh? It said, ‘Oeuf.’ What is that? It’s a joke. Do you want to hear another, or have you already had un oeuf? He looked at Grandma in the mirror and said, What’s he saying? She said, His grandfather loved animals more than he loved people. I said, Get it? Oeuf?"

I crawled back, because it’s dangerous to drive and talk at the same time, especially on the highway, which is what we were on. Grandma started touching me again, which was annoying, even though I didn’t want it to be. Mom said, Honey, and I said, "Oui, and she said, Did you give a copy of our apartment key to the mailman? I thought it was so weird that she would mention that then, because it didn’t have to do with anything, but I think she was looking for something to talk about that wasn’t the obvious thing. I said, The mailperson is a mailwoman. She nodded, but not exactly at me, and she asked if I’d given the mailwoman a key. I nodded yes, because I never used to lie to her before everything happened. I didn’t have a reason to. Why did you do that? she asked. So I told her, Stan— And she said, Who? And I said, Stan the doorman. Sometimes he runs around the corner for coffee, and I want to be sure all of my packages get to me, so I thought, if Alicia— Who? The mailwoman. If she had a key, she could leave things inside our door. But you can’t give a key to a stranger. Fortunately Alicia isn’t a stranger. We have lots of valuable things in our apartment. I know. We have really great things. Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know? What if she had stolen your things? She wouldn’t. But what if? But she wouldn’t. Well, did she give you a key to her apartment?" She was obviously mad at me, but I didn’t know why. I hadn’t done anything wrong. Or if I had, I didn’t know what it was. And I definitely didn’t mean to do it.

I moved over to Grandma’s side of the limousine and told Mom, Why would I need a key to her apartment? She could tell that I was zipping up the sleeping bag of myself, and I could tell that she didn’t really love me. I knew the truth, which was that if she could have chosen, it would have been my funeral we were driving to. I looked up at the limousine’s sunroof, and I imagined the world before there were ceilings, which made me wonder: Does a cave have no ceiling, or is a cave all ceiling? Maybe you could check with me next time, OK? Don’t be mad at me, I said, and I reached over Grandma and opened and closed the door’s lock a couple of times. I’m not mad at you, she said. Not even a little? No. Do you still love me? It didn’t seem like the perfect time to mention that I had already made copies of the key for the deliverer from Pizza Hut, and the UPS person, and also the nice guys from Greenpeace, so they could leave me articles on manatees and other animals that are going extinct when Stan is getting coffee. I’ve never loved you more.

Mom? Yes? I have a question. OK. What are you squeezing in your purse? She pulled out her hand and opened it, and it was empty. Just squeezing, she said.

Even though it was an incredibly sad day, she looked so, so beautiful. I kept trying to figure out a way to tell her that, but all of the ways I thought of were weird and wrong. She was wearing the bracelet that I made for her, and that made me feel like one hundred dollars. I love making jewelry for her, because it makes her happy, and making her happy is another one of my raisons d’être.

It isn’t anymore, but for a really long time it was my dream to take over the family jewelry business. Dad constantly used to tell me I was too smart for retail. That never made sense to me, because he was smarter than me, so if I was too smart for retail, then he really must have been too smart for retail. I told him that. First of all, he told me, I’m not smarter than you, I’m more knowledgeable than you, and that’s only because I’m older than you. Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents. Unless the child is a mental retard, I told him. He didn’t have anything to say about that. You said ‘first of all,’ so what’s second of all? Second of all, if I’m so smart, then why am I in retail? That’s true, I said. And then I thought of something: But wait a minute, it won’t be the family jewelry business if no one in the family is running it. He told me, Sure it will. It’ll just be someone else’s family. I asked, Well, what about our family? Will we open a new business? He said, We’ll open something. I thought about that my second time in a limousine, when the renter and I were on our way to dig up Dad’s empty coffin.

A great game that Dad and I would sometimes play on Sundays was Reconnaissance Expedition. Sometimes the Reconnaissance Expeditions were extremely simple, like when he told me to bring back something from every decade in the twentieth century—I was clever and brought back a rock—and sometimes they were incredibly complicated and would go on for a couple of weeks. For the last one we ever did, which never finished, he gave me a map of Central Park. I said, And? And he said, And what? I said, What are the clues? He said, Who said there had to be clues? There are always clues. That doesn’t, in itself, suggest anything. Not a single clue? He said, Unless no clues is a clue. Is no clues a clue? He shrugged his shoulders, like he had no idea what I was talking about. I loved that.

I spent all day walking around the park, looking for something that might tell me something, but the problem was that I didn’t know what I was looking for. I went up to people and asked if they knew anything that I should know, because sometimes Dad would design Reconnaissance Expeditions so I would have to talk to people. But everyone I went up to was just like, What the? I looked for clues around the reservoir. I read every poster on every lamppost and tree. I inspected the descriptions of the animals at the zoo. I even made kite-fliers reel in their kites so I could examine them, although I knew it was improbable. But that’s how tricky Dad could be. There was nothing, which would have been unfortunate, unless nothing was a clue. Was nothing a clue?

That night we ordered General Tso’s Gluten for dinner and I noticed that Dad was using a fork, even though he was perfect with chopsticks. Wait a minute! I said, and stood up. I pointed at his fork. Is that fork a clue? He shrugged his shoulders, which to me meant it was a major clue. I thought: Fork, fork. I ran to my laboratory and got my metal detector out of its box in the closet. Because I’m not allowed to be in the park alone at night, Grandma went with me. I started at the Eighty-sixth Street entrance and walked in extremely precise lines, like I was one of the Mexican guys who mow the lawn, so I wouldn’t miss anything. I knew the insects were loud because it was summer, but I didn’t hear them because my earphones covered my ears. It was just me and the metal underground.

Every time the beeps would get close together, I’d tell Grandma to shine the flashlight on the spot. Then I’d put on my white gloves, take the hand shovel from my kit, and dig extremely gently. When I saw something, I used a paintbrush to get rid of the dirt, just like a real archeologist. Even though I only searched a small area of the park that night, I dug up a quarter, and a handful of paper clips, and what I thought was the chain from a lamp that you pull to make the light go on, and a refrigerator magnet for sushi, which I know about, but wish I didn’t. I put all of the evidence in a bag and marked on a map where I found it.

When I got home, I examined the evidence in my laboratory under my microscope, one piece at a time: a bent spoon, some screws, a pair of rusty scissors, a toy car, a pen, a key ring, broken glasses for someone with incredibly bad eyes . . . 

I brought them to Dad, who was reading the New York Times at the kitchen table, marking the mistakes with his red pen. Here’s what I’ve found, I said, pushing my pussy off the table with the tray of evidence. Dad looked at it and nodded. I asked, So? He shrugged his shoulders like he had no idea what I was talking about, and he went back to the paper. Can’t you even tell me if I’m on the right track? Buckminster purred, and Dad shrugged his shoulders again. But if you don’t tell me anything, how can I ever be right? He circled something in an article and said, Another way of looking at it would be, how could you ever be wrong?

He got up to get a drink of water, and I examined what he’d circled on the page, because that’s how tricky he could be. It was in an article about the girl who had disappeared, and how everyone thought the congressman who was humping her had killed her. A few months later they found her body in Rock Creek Park, which is in Washington, D.C., but by then everything was different, and no one cared anymore, except for her parents.

statement, read to the hundreds of gathered press from a makeshift media center off the back of the family home, Levy’s father adamantly restated his confidence that his daughter would be found. We will not stop looking until we are given a definitive reason to stop looking, namely, Chandra’s return. During the brief question and answer period that followed a reporter from El Pais asked Mr. Levy if by return he meant safe return. Overcome with emotion, Mr. Levy was unable to speak, and his lawyer took the microphone. "We continue to hope and pray for Chandra’s safely, and will do everything within

It wasn’t a mistake! It was a message to me!

I went back to the park every night for the next three nights. I dug up a hair clip, and a roll of pennies, and a thumbtack, and a coat hanger, and a 9V battery, and a Swiss Army knife, and a tiny picture frame, and a tag for a dog named Turbo, and a square of aluminum foil, and a ring, and a razor, and an extremely old pocket watch that was stopped at 5:37, although I didn’t know if it was A.M. or P.M. But I still couldn’t figure out what it all meant. The more I found, the less I understood.

I spread the map out on the dining room table, and I held down the corners with cans of V8. The dots from where I’d found things looked like the stars in the universe. I connected them, like an astrologer, and if you squinted your eyes like a Chinese person, it kind of looked like the word fragile. Fragile. What was fragile? Was Central Park fragile? Was nature fragile? Were the things I found fragile? A thumbtack isn’t fragile. Is a bent spoon fragile? I erased, and connected the dots in a different way, to make door. Fragile? Door? Then I thought of porte, which is French for door, obviously. I erased and connected the dots to make "porte. I had the revelation that I could connect the dots to make cyborg, and platypus, and boobs, and even Oskar," if you were extremely Chinese. I could connect them to make almost anything I wanted, which meant I wasn’t getting closer to anything. And now I’ll never know what I was supposed to find. And that’s another reason I can’t sleep.

Anyway.

I’m not allowed to watch TV, although I am allowed to rent documentaries that are approved for me, and I can read anything I want. My favorite book is A Brief History of Time, even though I haven’t actually finished it, because the math is incredibly hard and Mom isn’t good at helping me. One of my favorite parts is the beginning of the first chapter, where Stephen Hawking tells about a famous scientist who was giving a lecture about how the earth orbits the sun, and the sun orbits the solar system, and whatever. Then a woman in the back of the room raised her hand and said, What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise. So the scientist asked her what the tortoise was standing on. And she said, But it’s turtles all the way down!

I love that story, because it shows how ignorant people can be. And also because I love tortoises.

A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters. I don’t know why, but it was one of the only things that made my boots lighter. One weird thing is that instead of using normal stamps, I used stamps from my collection, including valuable ones, which sometimes made me wonder if what I was really doing was trying to get rid of things. The first letter I wrote was to Stephen Hawking. I used a stamp of Alexander Graham Bell.

Dear Stephen Hawking,

Can I please be your protégé?

Thanks,

Oskar Schell

I thought he wasn’t going to respond, because he was such an amazing

Reviews for Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close

[castlelass · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Narrated by precocious nine-year-old Oskar Schell, this book relates his journey to express grief for his father, who died in the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center. After finding a key in his father’s closet, Oskar embarks upon a quest to locate what it opens, symbolically paying tribute to his father's life while also helping him heal. An intertwined story tells of Oskar's grandparents' difficult lives after surviving the bombing of Dresden during World War II. Their stories involve letters written from Oskar’s grandfather to his father and from Oskar’s grandmother to Oskar. Themes include the silence of suffering, the impact of trauma, and how difficult it can be to overcome.

This is another book where I can appreciate its artistry but is not a particularly enjoyable reading experience. I thought Oskar’s story, though it stretches the limits of belief, was touching. I felt compassion for the child who has suddenly lost his father and describes what is obviously depression as “heavy boots.” It hits very close to home for me. However, I found the grandparents’ storylines disjointed and difficult to follow. The chapters narrated by Oskar are the strongest and most direct, though his voice is much more analytical and mature than a typical child. There were many interesting parallels between the experiences of Oskar and his grandfather. The tone is very sad and there are many loose ends.

I think the overall impression of this book is more effective than the individual parts. It would be a good book to read with another person or as part of a book club.

[jonbrammer-788089 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I have to agree with some of the complaints that this book is gimmicky. I think Foer has a lot of ambition and was trying to write approach 9/11 with sensitivity and artfulness. It is telling, however, that the two most moving images in the book - the flipbook of the person falling into the World Trade Center, and the narrative of the father in Hiroshima after the bombing - are not Foer's work, the latter sounding like it was lifted in whole cloth from John Hersey's "Hiroshima".

Oskar, our protagonist, is nothing but a collection of verbal tics. "Jose", "heavy boots", "googolplex", etc. What starts out as cute quickly becomes grating. The reader is left spending too much time puzzling over minor mysteries - why does the grandfather have yes and no tattooed on his hands when it would be simpler just to nod or shake his head? - and not enough time actually caring about the characters. I found Oskar's mother to be the most sympathetic character, but she gets far too little attention.

[sparemethecensor · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A bit too precious (narrator's voice) for my taste given the subject matter (9/11).

[browner56 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Oskar Schell was seven years old when his father Thomas was killed in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Two years later, Oskar is still struggling with that loss as well as some secrets he has kept buried deeply inside himself. He is also an extremely bright boy—overly precocious, really—but suffers from a variety of social maladies, including the inability to fit in well with his colleagues at school. When he discovers a strange key marked only with the name ‘Black’ that his father had hidden in his closet before he died, Oskar embarks on a months-long journey across the five boroughs of New York City to solve the mystery and bring closure to the grief that he, his widowed mother, and paternal grandparents are feeling at their collective tragedy. That quest and what he finds at the end provide the emotional impact of the story.Published in 2005, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close stands as one of the first literary attempts to reconcile and explain the consequences of the events that took place during that horrific time in our history. In that effort, the novel succeeds remarkably well. The author made the wise choice of focusing the story not on the fateful day itself, but on the aftermath that the surviving loved ones of those killed had to live through. The emotions generated by Oskar and his relatives were raw, real, and deeply affecting. On the other hand, the book is less successful in relating the specifics of the Schell family’s story, which is told in terms that are too sentimental (if that is actually possible, given the topic). Further, Oskar often comes across as unbelievably glib and contrived, while his grandmother’s entire backstory is convoluted and largely unnecessary to the novel’s main goal. On balance, then, I found this to be a book with an important message to convey but one in which the storytelling was unfortunately flawed.

[sami7-951065 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beautiful and weird in a very good way.

She lived for nothing more than living, with nothing to get inspired by, to care for, to call her own.
Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive, and thinking is killing me. I think and think and think.
No, Oskar, that's her museum. Mine's in the other room.

[jayeless-698797 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Considering how much I loved Everything is Illuminated, I was really, really disappointed with this one. It's incredibly pretentious. Not a lot really happens. The characters didn't feel like characters, but like plot devices. I found the main character, nine-year-old Oskar Schell, kind of cringeworthy. I thought that the subplot about his grandparents' story was much better, but it was similar to the backstory in Everything is Illuminated which was much, much better. I just think having a character who refuses to speak and writes everything everywhere is really gimmicky. One of my grandmothers died when I was seven, and because she had motor neuron disease, I can't remember her saying a word – she, too, wrote everything in notebooks. But those notebooks never overflowed in the house. I'm not sure where I'm going with this tangent, except that this grandfather character seemed like an insult to my intelligence.

I didn't hate the book, but I thought it was very mediocre. Mostly, it thought it was way deeper and more insightful than it really was. I don't even know what it was trying to say – "when people die, you need to move on," I guess. But considering that's all it's trying to say, the dozens and dozens of pages devoted to Oskar searching for the lock that can be opened by this key he found is really annoying.

Hmm, I was going to rate this two stars, but typing this up has made me reconsider. I didn't hate it, but I certainly did not like it, and apparently "one star" encompasses that! So yeah. My advice – read Everything is Illuminated for sure. But skip this. The other book will just get your hopes up, when this is a big let-down.

PS: the exception to the above is Oskar's letter to his French teacher, pretending to be his mother and cancelling his lessons. That cracked me up. His mother apparently never even cares that she's paying for French lessons he doesn't go to though, which is kind of indicative of this book in general.

[lorikboyd · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Took me over 2 months to read and retread 80 pages. Could not get into it. Passed it on to a friend...hope she has better luck!

[sandrabrower · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I've falling in love with a boy that has the biggest ideas ever! Oskar jumped off the pages and into my life faster than I could say, "whoa".
I don't own this book, but I now have to purchase it so I can keep it close.

As I have been reading, I have realized that I feel as Oskar does, I have "heavy boots".

I didn't want the book to end. This book has had me scribbling in my writing journal, my gratitude journal and in a letter I wrote to my friend who past away. Its myriad of emotions had me in tears when Oskar found his father's penmanship at the art shop. Laughing when he read his grandma's memories of meeting his grandfather and more tears when I realized that his mother and he didn't have the same relationship that he and his father did and now he only had her to talk to.

“…sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all of the lives I’m not living.” Thomas Schell sr. This quote really touched my heart. How many lives am I not living?

"Heavy Boots" indeed.

[cyderry · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

My book club selected this book for September because of its connection with 9/11 so I thought it would be interested. However, the writing was so choppy and disjointed that I was unable to finish reading it. The characters, IMO, were too strange it seemed as if the author was trying to make this book and its characters unlikable.I abandoned it halfway through because I really didn't like the writing style, someone else might.

[snash_44 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written somewhere close to stream of consciousness, the book is about grief and the near impossibility of dealing with loss. While it manages to create humorous scenes, every person involved in the story is dealing with loss.

[beth.clarke · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book was strange, but I like that. I'm not sure that taking place after 9/11 was key to the story. I think it's what the reader brings to the book. My impression is that Oskar, the nine year old that tells the story, has Asperger's Syndrome. He doesn't know how to handle his father's death, so he tries to make order out of something that can't ever make sense. The interactions with his neighbors, mom, grandma, and grandpa are what make the book extraordinary. I loved it. I found myself laughing with him, feeling hopeless, anxious, scared - I understood this character. I wanted to hug him. Typically, I don't get emotional over a story, but this one tugged at my heart. I don't think it's a book everyone would love, but if you like complex and challenging story lines, it may be for you, too.

[m_mozeleski · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have read two books by Jonathan Safran Foer. Both have left me in tears.
I don't know why, except sometimes the words were so excruciatingly tender in ways that I don't even know how to describe that it broke my heart to bits.


I will be reading both books again, to be sure. So I can understand them better. So I know why I cried, perhaps.

[liscarey · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oskar Schell is a nine-year-old boy living in New York City, and trying to cope with the terrible loss of his father in the Twin Towers on 9/11.

Shortly after that horrible day, Oskar finds an odd-looking key in a vase stored on a closet shelf. It's inside an envelope, on which someone has written one word: Black. He seizes on this, and decides that he has to find the lock that the key fits, to learn something important about his father. Concluding that "Black" must be a person's name, Oskar sets out to meet every person in New York City with the last name of Black, and find out who has the right lock.

In the process, Oskar meets all kinds of people, from an amazing range of backgrounds. But in between Oskar's adventures, we learn the stories of Oskar's grandmother, and his grandfather, the husband who left her forty years ago, for reasons he never explained. As the three Schells tell us their stories, a fascinating family history unfolds, and we explore complex and multilayered relationships. Further layered in are Oskar's memories of his father, and the games and stories his father shared with him.

Oskar is smart, lonely, grieving, and coping in his own way, which is often baffling to the adults around him. That's perhaps only fair, since their ways of coping baffle him, too. He's an interesting and likable kid, and anyone who has lost a parent too young, or survived the events of 9/11 will relate to him. I'm very glad I finally stumbled across this book; I'm sorry I missed it when it first came out.

Highly recommended.

I bought this book.

[over.the.edge · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel
By Jonathan Safran For
2005
Houghton Mifflin

Sad.....Brilliant.....Devastating

This book is creative, and thought provoking. It will put you through the cycle of emotions from sad to happy....and everywhere in between. This was a fantastic story of the ll tragedy abd loss of 9/11, and the desperate search for meaning.
Nine year old Oskar Schell lost his father in 9/11, and the devastation of the World Trade Center. After he learns of his father's death, Oskar finds a mysterious unidentified key in the pocket of a coat in his closet, and sets out on a journey that will take him through all 5 boroughs of New York, meeting fasvinating, strange and mundane people, learning of their lives and stories along his way. Oskar is determined to find the lock that opens with this key....he is relentless and obsessed.
Totally recommended.....
This is also a motion picture starring Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock.

[ma_washigeri · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Started well, continued not so well and finished unevenly. There was a sentimentality, particularly with the grandparent voices that alienated me in the end.

[sheiladeeth_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When the twin towers fell, a father struggled to leave some kind of message for his family. His young son Oskar didn’t pick up, and so begins a story of hidden memories, lost details, mysterious strangers, and tragedy’s wounds.Other tragedies wounded the world long before 9/11 of course. And other wounded characters wander through this novel, each telling their broken tales, in unsent letters, unread words, unheard tapes and undelivered—even unspoken—love. Coincidences aren’t the only links between these characters, and the story moves forward, driven by a small, intelligent and inventive boy’s desire to discover the truth (and so stop imagining). Meanwhile other truths play out behind him, gradually drawing the threads of a silent man, an unseeing woman, Dresden’s fire and New York’s horror all together. Each character becomes real, despite their difference from the norm. Each voice (even the silent) is perfectly rendered. And the story reads like a voyage of discovery, perfectly timed for the reader to follow along.Told with humor, pathos, angst and delight, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a cleverly constructed novel of our times, with protagonists who cross city and continents, get stuck in airports, dread tall buildings, know horror and find something approximating love.Disclosure: I borrowed an ecopy. Now I want a real one!

[phyllis2779 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed some parts of this book a lot and others were a little boring. Some things were repetitious and some parts didn't hold my interest. The parts of the book from the boy's POV were the most interesting. The character we didn't find out much about was the mother and I wanted to know more about her. The grandmother and grandfather were somewhat interesting but also kind of a mystery. They seem to do a lot with no income. I found out more about them than I really wanted to know.

[dldbizacct · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow. This book is beautiful, painful, haunting, uplifting, powerful -- so many things. The writing is superb, the plot is complex and mesmerising, the characters -- you just fall in love with them. This is a book that will stay with me a long time.

[emscape · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Young Oskar is traumatized (who wouldn't be?) by the death of his father on 9/11. He finds a key in a jar in his dad's closet and goes on a search around New York for clues as to what it opens. Oskar also seems to have some special needs (autism? aspergers?) and thus, his narration is not necessarily reliable. I was more than a little concerned for Oskar as he traversed NYC ostensibly alone, and knocked on doors of complete strangers in various neighborhoods. Between that and trying to diagnose him (I used to be a social worker), I had a hard time with this at first. However, the story drew me in and forced me to suspend some disbelief as the cast of characters assisted Oskar and his family with their grieving process. I was also compelled, soon after reading, to view the film based on this novel, which was excellent and poignant. This book is extremely touching and incredibly well-written. (Sorry, I couldn't resist).

[pbjwelch · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I rarely read fiction (my forte is history) and especially not books that have strange pages with blots of ink and typographical distortions on them, but I chanced upon this paperback on a 'discarded book' shelf of a ship and opened it to a random page. Others have summarized the story and discussed whether the young hero has Asperger's Syndrome or not and I have little to add to the number of fine reviews here on Goodreads of this incredibly witty and moving book ... except to say that it has forced me to rethink my moratorium on reading fiction. I really never thought that could happen, and it just did.

[dorie.craig · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Oskar is a 9-year old boy whose mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. His search through the five boroughs of New York brings him into contact with many different characters. This story was a little heavy on the melodrama, and the character of the precocious child has been done to death, but I still enjoyed this story for what it was. I remember that the lock reveal at the end was a let down to me.

[bookomaniac-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Dit boek verdient alleszins de prijs van de originaliteit: het verwerkt het grote trauma van Nine-eleven op een heel eigen manier, met originele verhalen vanuit diverse invalshoeken, met zwart-wit-illustraties en met typografische truukjes (zoals blanco pagina’s, almaar dichter op elkaar gedrukte letters enz.). Dit geeft op zich al aan dat Safran Foer eer betuigt aan hoe mensen omgaan met een bijzonder ingrijpende, we zouden nu zeggen, disruptieve gebeurtenis.Over de belangrijkste vertelstem, de 9-jarige Oskar Schell, is al heel wat geschreven, - zowel positief als negatief -, en ook voor mij heeft dit eigenwijze, overslimme, en sociaal gehandicapte jongetje zowel een afstotelijk als een aantrekkelijk kantje. Maar hij draagt deze roman wel. De bijkomende vertelstemmen van de oma en de grootvader zijn misschien even problematisch (en getuigend van soms erg surreëel menselijk gedrag) maar zij trekken Oskar’s verhaal van gemis, woede en onmacht ineens naar een veel diepere laag. Persoonlijk vond ik die delen van het boek veel interessanter, ze maakten veel tastbaarder hoe grote, “historische” gebeurtenissen ( Nine-eleven, Dresden, Hiroshima) een diepe, traumatische uitwerking hebben op concrete, “kleine” mensen, die heel dikwijls al in een heel complexe existentiële situatie zitten. Safran Foer wijst daarbij nergens op grote, definitieve oplossingen voor dit traumatische leed, tenzij het leven zelf en vooral de nabijheid, nabijheid van geliefden, het samen delen van vreugde en verdriet, gemis en verlangen. Schrijftechnisch put de auteur uit een rijk arsenaal aan literaire verwijzingen (die naar Gunter Grass en W.G. Sebald liggen voor de hand), en illustreert hij met kleine verhalen (zoals in het begin de zoektocht “zonder aanwijzingen” van Oskar in Central Park, of de raamvertelling van alle mensen met de naam Black waar hij langsgaat, met elk hun eigen verhaal) hoe mensen met het mysterie van lijden omgaan. Als vorm van therapeutisch schrijven (voor al wie geraakt is door Nine-Eleven) vind ik dit boek best geslaagd. Maar het doet me iets te geconstrueerd aan om van echt hele grote literatuur te spreken.

[razinha-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mixed reaction... On the one hand, I think Foer did well with the Asberger's/autism. BUT, I find the thoughts, language, experiences (classmates, other interactions) he related completely incongruous with the thoughts, language and experiences of a boy as young as his main character. Couple the very bizarre interludes that seem aligned with the character, but out of character for the characters being portrayed. I guess Foer used them as a devices to convey the different world of the autistic mind. Excellent primary narrative, averaged with substandard secondary stories, yields a middling three stars

[adrianburke_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Do I like it? Or is it too cleverly manipulative? An adult's kids' book??

[shulera1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I picked up Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close at the suggestion of my friend's girlfriend. I don't really know this girl, since the two of them started dating fairly recently, but after talking to her for a bit, I thought she was really cool and I wanted to know more about her.

Fortunately, we started talking about books, which is one of the best ways to get to know someone. We exchanged favorites, and ELaIC was high on her list. I got it from the library the very next day and started reading almost immediately.

I loved it. The story was heart-wrenchingly sad and beautiful, but still remained believable. In addition to a good story, I found its style to be intriguing. Foer breaks a lot of traditional rules of writing, but I liked most of them. They felt right. Except the dialogue breaks. All the dialogue runs together and I'm not a big fan of that style, so if that kind of thing really bothers you, I probably wouldn't recommend it. If you can look past it, you really should try this out.

And now I feel like I understand my friend's girlfriend much better. Hopefully once you read this, you'll feel like you understand both of us.

[karenduff · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Only finished this book as I was reading it for a book group challenge otherwise it would have been abandoned.

[floratina · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

READ IN DUTCH

My expectations were really high on this one! Many people told me just how much they enjoyed this book and how special it was.

For myself, I had to admit that I did like the title.



In the beginning I had to get used to the style and the use of different types throughout the story. After some time, that was fine, though not as great as I had hoped for. The story is a search in which I believed some steps were a bit too convenient for our main character. I found it interesting to read about the aftermath of 9/11, the effects it had on the people involved.



Overall, I liked reading it, but as happens quite often, when you have such great expectations, reality can't live up to it.

[gma2lana · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I started to read this book because it was a suggestion in the reading group that I am in. Key word in that sentence, STARTED. I Can't finish it. I see it as pointless, and very confusing. I feel I have wasted my reading time on something unbearably boring and did I say CONFUSING? I very rarely give up on books, in fact, I made it to page 170 in this...then looked at the reviews to see what it was that I was missing. My opinion, you either love it or hate it. I choose the latter.

[blackrabbit89 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Why I Read It:I needed an audiobook to listen to on the five-hour drive home for Christmas, so I thought this might be an easy listen. I switched to the regular book version to finish up the final two thirds of the story.Overarching Story Line: 1/5The basic story line—boy searches for clues about a mysterious key found in his deceased father’s closet—is a good idea in theory, but in practice it just did not work out. I found so much of this novel to be incredibly unbelievable. A young boy travels all over New York City by himself, knocking on the doors of people he’s never met and about whom he knows absolutely nothing? I also didn’t enjoy the secondary story line, which is told by Oskar’s grandmother and grandfather and is remarkably depressing. I felt like good storytelling was being sacrificed for emotional manipulation of the reader. Voice/Style: 2/5I hated the way the grandfather wrote, using all commas instead of periods. I didn’t like the chapter in which the words got closer and closer together until it was just pages of black, letters piled upon letters until it was unreadable. And I didn’t understand the random pictures interspersed throughout the book. I definitely could have done without those.Characterization: 3/5One of the only things I did enjoy about the book was Oskar. I thought he was quite an interesting character: emotional, unique, and very intelligent. He struck me as someone who may have been on the Autism spectrum. I liked the way he spoke, and I enjoyed the sections that he narrated the most.Additional Elements: 3/5This story is saturated with the events of September 11, 2001. I think that this book illustrated to me the true tragedy of that day better than anything ever has before.Recommended for:People who like really sad books.

[carmenmilligan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is so beautifully written. It combines various perspective, time shifts, internal monologue, journal entries, entries and photographs to tell the story. Nothing here is wasted. It was a slow read for me, since I wanted to savor each line, let it take root in me, and read more. I highly recommend this very unusual book.